Salted peanut and milk chocolate blondies - straight from the fridge

So, I made blondies. I filled them with big chunks of my favourite milk chocolate, oats, and salted peanuts. They were amazing. The day I baked them they were like warm, gooey, underbaked choc chip cookies. After a night in the fridge they were even better, just like a caramelly Snickers bar. They were intense and rich, with an almost obscene amount of butter, but hot damn they were good!

Gooey blondie square on the day of baking

I've made blondies a couple of times in the past - Nigella's white chocolate and macadamia 'brownies' from How to be a Domestic Goddess, and her blondies from Kitchen (not blogged) - but neither particularly impressed me. The former were more like a dense eggy cake, and the latter were overly sweet, with a bizarre texture.

My first homemade pissaladière

When we started our planning last week, and I realised we had a definite French theme to the desserts, I started looking through my collection of cookbooks for appropriate snacky finger food. The first recipe that caught my eye was Tyler Florence's caramelized onion toast, in Tyler's Ultimate. In effect, it's a simplified version of pissaladière. Instead of pastry or bread dough, he uses a sliced baguette as a base for the caramelised onions (although he'd say carrrr-melized), anchovies and olives.

Later that night, I was chatting with my fabulous Francophile foodie friend Clarice. When I told her that I was thinking of making pissaladière for the party, she responded with an enthusiastic, "OMG YUM pissaladière!!!!! Ina's recipe is amazing!!!!!!!!!" Well! That was all the encouragement I needed! The recipe is available online, here.

The next day when I went shopping for the ingredients, I happened to see that pissaladière is this month's featured "classic dish" in Gourmet Traveller. This reassured me that I am very much on the pulse of current culinary trends. (I know, how could I have slept at night otherwise?)


1. The Onions

A shitload of onions are sliced thinly (you'll need a good knife, or a mandolin), and then sautéed in olive oil with garlic and thyme until nice and soft and sweet.



2. The Bread Dough

I can categorically say that I have never had as great a success with yeasted dough as I had with this one. Mix and knead (with a dough hook), and that was all there was to it.
It didn't seem to rise that much (it was freezing that day!), but the dough was wonderfully soft and elastic, and stretched out easily to fit my baking sheet.


3. The topping

You should be more generous with the topping than I was. I couldn't get a criss-cross (will make you jump) pattern happening with the anchovies, as I only had a small jar. I also had to spread the onions more thinly than is desirable because I decided at the last minute to test the recipe on bread dough, and on puff pastry.


Bake it at a very high heat for 15 minutes, and Bob's your oncle.


The Verdict:
- They were très delicieux, but a bit too salty for our taste. I think that this is because I got the anchovies from the bottom of the jar, covered in the oil and salt of their departed brothers. I'll buy a new jar for next time, and give the anchovies a little soak in water first.
- Puff pastry was good, but only hot out of the oven. This makes things difficult for timing purposes. It also crumbles everywhere, which is not a sexy look for people or carpets.
- Ina's bread dough rocks. It was nice and crispy, and the slightly sweet taste from the honey in the dough was great. As a bonus, the bread-pissaladière is edible at room temperature too. I'm making Ina's version!
- I'll probably do 4 loaves (freezing the dough, making the topping in advance, and assembling and baking them on the day). I'll bake 2 at a time, cut them when they come out and pass them around.

Sometimes the best meals happen on the spur of the moment. I came home today with no plans for dinner, but with a lovely loaf of ciabatta bread. I was inspired to buy this bread after seeing Ina Garten make garlic bread with ciabatta on her Barefoot Contessa program not too long ago. When I told my dad that I wanted to make garlic bread, he suggested spaghetti marinara. Sounded good to me! Dad went out to buy some marinara mix, and I started working on dinner.

For the pasta sauce, I sautéed finely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil, then added a tin of chopped tomatoes and let them simmer slowly until thickened. I let it sit on the stove, and when Dad came home I stirred in the marinara mix until it cooked - about 4 minutes. Whilst it simmered, I cooked the pasta (fettucine was all we had in the pantry) and prepared the garlic bread. Ina's exact recipe is here, but here is a rough set of instructions:

Take one loaf of ciabatta and slice it in half lengthways...

Sautée finely chopped garlic and parsley in good olive oil... (you can imagine how good this smells!)

Spread the mixture on one of the slices.

Spread butter on the other side. Reassemble the loaf, cover in foil, and bake in a moderate oven for 5 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for a further 5 minutes to crisp it up. Slice into chunky fingers.

Then it was simply a case of tossing the cooked pasta with the sauce, and scattering some chopped parsley over. Ta-dah! Dinner was done. Easy and delicious! It only took about 30 minutes all up. Even without a recipe, the pasta turned out really well (and I almost never cook without a recipe). Lucky. I loved Ina's garlic bread, and highly recommend it as a tasty accompaniment that's a little bit different from the usual.